About

Atomic Robo Reprint Regalia!

$184,827

pledged of $70,000 goal

1,325

backers

Atomic Robo follows the nearly Eisner Award winning adventures of a robot adventurer through a century of sci-fi action. The comic began in 2007 and today there are nine volumes. Each one is its own story and an entry point to the larger universe of Atomic Robo.

We started publishing these archives to the web, at atomic-robo.com, back in January of this year. All nine volumes are already online for free. Currently, all-new never before seen content is going up starting with The Trial of Atomic Robo. The highly anticipated all-new volume, The Ring of Fire, starts soon with a prequel story to catch folks up on the world of Atomic Robo!

But don't just take our word for it, here's some praise for Atomic Robo:

"Unanimously heralded by fans, creators, retailers and critics as the perfect first comic to give to a non-comic-reader." - CBR

GOALS - HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?!

Atomic Robo started as monthly print series available through comic shops. We changed all of that at the beginning of this year by putting everything online. The response has been amazing. We reached over 100,000 unique visitors and served over EIGHT MILLION pages. But we recognize that a lot of folks still prefer physical copies. For instance, our core audience who supported us from the beginning! Or our new fans who want to own a piece of Atomic Robo.

So we're gonna reprint every volume and we're gonna do it right. These aren't just the same old trade paperbacks with new logos. No, no! We’re making some crazy improvements while we’re at it.

You always asked for hardcovers. So, boom, you’re getting HARDCOVERS.

We're re-lettering the first five volumes to be in line with the improved fonts of later volumes.

Every single volume will include exclusive all-new material in the form of THE SECRET FILES OF DR. DINOSAUR. These are going to be completely sane and ordinary. Behold!

We want all nine volumes of Atomic Robo back in print so every volume is available to everyone. We spent a lot of time evaluating how to best handle this, and ultimately decided on "grab bag" reward tiers. It's a little weird, so we're gonna talk you through it.

Grab Bag?

You will not be able to choose exactly which books you're getting unless you order all nine of them. Every tier between one and eight volumes will be a randomized set of books. But don't worry, each book you get will be unique, i.e. no repeats.

This lets us control the inventory so we can make reliable cost projections and deliver these to you below retail prices. And let's be honest. There’s nine volumes of Atomic Robo. If you’re here, you like at least eight of them. The odds are in your favor.

Practicality

Printing nine volumes is a logistical obstacle course. Allowing individual backers to select their sets of books would radically increase the cost of shipping/handling, increase chances for errors, and make it almost impossible for us to make accurate cost projections. Most importantly, we have to reach a minimum print run for each of nine different books or risk selling them to you at a deep loss. And then go bankrupt. And then no more Robo. Let's not do that.

The best way to keep the inventory under control and to guarantee the lowest prices on these books is to offer “grab bag” reward tiers.

Philosophically

We’ve always said, “You can start with any volume and read the rest in any order.” Now that we’re in control of publishing Atomic Robo, we’re pushing that aspect hard. These hardcovers don’t even have numbers on them! Each story is an entry point into the larger Atomic Robo mythos.

We've heard it a million times at conventions: "But which one's first?" SPOILER ALERT: it doesn't matter! We already made every single volume an ideal entry point.

Sure, you need that completionist mentality to keep track of The X-Men or Batman. We get that. But it has no place here. Especially now that the entire Atomic Robo back catalog is online for free. If you really, really, really need to read this stuff "in order" then start here.

But, hey, we know it’s a little weird to get random books. So, we’re gonna help out those of you willing to support this crazy endeavor. Since doing grab bags will help reduce the price of production across the board, we're cutting prices on every item in this campaign.

Each and every volume you get through this campaign is discounted AT LEAST 20% versus the retail price. PLUS you get DRM-free PDFs. To make this savings as clear as possible, every tier posted below calls out its discount in dollars.

Higher reward tiers include postcards from the Atomic Robo universe; being included in a special thanks/sponsor section in the books themselves; becoming a canonical Action Scientist; or getting original artwork from the series!

WOW. WHAT VALUE. WHAT OPPORTUNITY. YOU SHOULD ALL RUN - DON'T WALK - TO THAT BACKER BUTTON - TODAY!

A NOTE ABOUT INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING

We ran into a host of issues with international shipping during our previous campaign. A lot of shipments disappeared, got returned, or were damaged before they got to our backers. We did a lot of reshipping. And in some cases we had to reorder high-dollar exclusive items to replace what was lost. We were using standard international shipping because it was the cheapest option for you guys. But this didn't offer any sort of insurance, so all the extra costs were on us. There was no customs brokerage either, so many of our international backers felt they had to pay for shipping twice.

Never again.

This time around we're dealing with packages that will be weighing in excess of 13 POUNDS (6KG!) so international shipping costs will be high no matter what we do. Even so, we were horrified at the idea of hundreds of dollars worth of books getting lost or damaged. And we don't want our international backers being asked to pay for additional fees upon delivery.

So this time around, anything OUTSIDE the U.S. or CANADA is getting shipped via UPS Worldwide Expedited. This service gets your goods to you in FIVE business days max. It includes tracking, insurance, and customs brokerage. If anything goes wrong with these shipments, you will know immediately, and we will be able to respond faster than ever. Best of all, we'll get refunds for any lost goods and the shipping so we can easily replace them without eating into already slim profits.

That said these services do not come cheap. The next service down didn't include insurance, customs brokerage, or live tracking, and was around 2/3 the cost. Given our previous experience, we did not consider that savings worth the risk. If we ran into any of the international shipping problems from the previous campaign, we'd have to re-ship, we'd still be out of all the money, we still wouldn't know what happened, and you'd still have paid more in shipping for essentially no reason. So, we're only offering the fastest/most secure option for outside the U.S. and Canada.

Canada gets a bit of a pass on this. We didn't see many Canadian packages go missing, but when they did it still stung. So we're shipping via DHL International with Delivery Confirmation. This literally cuts the shipping cost by 1/3rd for those of you in the Great North. Higher tiers will still be pricey to ship, but remember at those levels we're moving 13lbs/6kg worth of books and other goodies.

P.S. - We're working with BREADPIG to make sure things stay on track. Mostly this means keeping shiny objects away from us as much as possible. It's a tough job, but they're up to it.

PickyDuck helped us put together the video. They're awesome.

Risks and challenges

Re-lettering will take some time. That's been scheduled for.

Layout will take some time pending how many SECRET FILES OF DR. DINOSAURS pages there are per volume. The total page number for those will be part of our stretch goals WHOOPS SPOILER.

But those are manageable. What we're most worried about are port problems. The West coast had a pretty nasty strike during the last half of 2014. If something of that calibre happens again while we're waiting for books, there's nothing to do but wait longer.

We're also working with BREADPIG. They've done over 10 million dollars in crowdfunding projects. They know how to fix problems and keep things on track big or small.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $75 or more
About $75

You are name dropped in an upcoming Atomic Robo comic as an action scientist! + THREE Random HCs with Kickstarter Exclusive Foil + Signature Plates Signed by Scott & Brian + THREE Random Postcards from Robo + Your Name on the Thank You Page + THREE DRM Free PDFs (47$ Off Retail!)

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $175 or more
About $175

You are an Action Scientist featured on Tesladyne's website! + PDFs of all Nine Volumes + PDFs of Real Science Adventures V1 & V2 + PDF of the Tesladyne Field Guide 2013 + Your Name on the Thank You Page + (70$ Off Retail!) DIGITAL ONLY TIER

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $250 or more
About $250

You APPEAR and are mentioned by name in an upcoming Atomic Robo comic as an action scientist! + PDFs of all Nine Volumes + PDFs of Real Science Adventures V1 & V2 + PDF of the Tesladyne Field Guide 2013 + Your Name on the Thank You Page + (70$ Off Retail!) DIGITAL ONLY TIER

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $300 or more
About $300

You are an action scientist featured on Tesladyne's website! + All HCs with Kickstarter Exclusive Foil (190$ Off Retail!) + Signature Plates Signed by Scott & Brian + NINE Random Postcards from Robo + Your Name on the Thank You Page + 2013 Field Guide + NINE DRM Free PDFs + PDFs of the RSA V1 & V2 and Field Guide!

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $375 or more
About $375

You APPEAR and are mentioned by name in an upcoming Atomic Robo comic as an action scientist! + All HCs with Kickstarter Exclusive Foil (190$ Off Retail!) + Signature Plates Signed by Scott & Brian + NINE Random Postcards from Robo + Your Name on the Thank You Page + NINE DRM Free PDFs

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $5,000 or more
About $5,000

North American Public Event - Scott and Brian will come to your store/college/cabal/hidden lab and talk about Robo. We will bring 9 Copies of everything at the 170$ Tier. We will not be a human sacrifice or human guinea pigs.